September 22

Today was our first day of lectures. I took the ferry with a bunch of other Stanford students to UQ. The ferry is fabulous and I much prefer it to the bus (because we’re on a boat!). It goes surprisingly fast and you get a really nice breeze (Brisbane is pretty hot and humid). The ferry driver laughed at us the whole time, because at one point, early on, the ferry started going backwards and we all looked so confused. Turns out it just does that because there’s a stop almost directly across the Brisbane River, and it needs to go back a bit to have a straight shot across.

Sophie Dove, one of the coral reef ecosystem professors, talked to us first. She had us from 9am-12pm, but she gave us just over a half hour off for tea and then let us out early. Heron Island and all the coral stuff sounds crazy amazing, although I’m a little worried that, since I’m theoretically doing my project on corals, that I won’t have any free time on the island. Heron Island is located right near (“a stone’s throw”) from the end of the continental shelf, so it’s supposed to be beautiful snorkeling. It was really nice to have shortened lectures because I didn’t sleep much last night (people were hanging out in our room until about midnight and then I naturally wake up around 4:30, although I managed to stay in bed until 6:30am).

Then we had lunch, which was fine. On the way back to class we ran into a pair of masked plover (and a zillion other birds that I need to look up in the book Julie gave me) and their three adorable chicks. The chicks were the cutest things ever and were terrified of us, since, I guess, these birds are common enough to Australians that they don’t stop to stare. They were trying to hop up out of the parking lot, but were too short to get over the curb. I forgot my camera (again), but several other people were taking photos and videos. The parents decided that they’d had enough of us ogling their chicks, and flew at us. Josh and Ilan both literally got birds in their faces. We took the hint and fled.

Since everyone else was mostly back in the classroom already, we slid into the back right as Norm Duke (mangrove professor) started talking. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see most of the slideshow over people’s heads so I didn’t follow the lecture that well, since he was prone to gesticulating at things on the slide show and then talking without ever giving nouns. He lectured for an hour and a half straight (which I mostly followed), then he gave us a ten minute break, and then lectured for another hour and a half. I really can’t tell you what he talked about in that second hour and a half, so I think I am going to google his works. Something about how changing precipitation changes the distribution of mangroves : salt pans and marshes. However, some of the mangrove dieback didn’t become salt pans/marshes, but instead was sinking and formed these mostly lifeless ponds. And those were really worrisome because mosquitoes (which carry lots of diseases) breed in them and all sorts of other things that I can’t quite remember. Presumably there was a lot more to it, since the discussion took an hour and a half.

After lecture, a bunch of us hopped the bus to the mall near our motel and cashed our money orders (food $). Now I’m just kind of chilling in my room until I get hungry. Then I’ll find people and go out to dinner.

I have yet to explore Brisbane proper, so maybe I’ll do that tonight if I can find a good map or a willing companion. I also really ought to buy a SIM card for my phone before I forget. This weekend is free, though, and I’d like to go see the city¸ go to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, and maybe Steve Irwin’s zoo.

Hello from Australia!

Technically this is Day 2, but it's the first day of the program.

I am sitting on UQ's campus (free internet, but unfortunately not close to where we're staying) and I am surrounded by rainbow lorikeets and kookaburras.

This morning there was the first day of orientation. We got an overview of the program and then got to meet a few of the professors and our organizers / support team. After that we had morning tea, which is adorable and I wish we'd have it every day. There were teas and coffee and cake and fruit. After tea we had our "occupational health and safety introduction," aka "Crocodile 101." Dave Harris, who gave the talk, had a crocodile skull with him. From an entire morning of lectures, these are pretty much my only notes:

CROCS-

- north of Gladstone = croc territory

- can live to over 100!!!

- up to 7m long (usually no more than 5m)

- smart. They stalk their prey and make note of where people generally enter water, and lay in wait

- typically attack from water

- always assume there is a croc in any and every body of water

- do NOT swim unless you know it's safe

- stand back 3+ meters from water's edge

and so on like that. There is also a parenthetical note in tiny text which say "SHARKS: Don't swim at dusk, don't swim in the Brisbane River, and don't swim at river mouths."

Afterwards we got our photos taken for our UQ visiting student ID and then went on a really quickie tour (I retained nothing). Then we went to a barbeque around 2:30pm and I've been chilling on the lawn here with people ever since.

A lot of people are talking about going on a surfing trip on our free time this weekend, but I'm thinking that I'll go to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary so I can hold a koala (seems like a requirement for being in Australia, right?).

And yes, Australian accents are fabulous.

p.s. There are two guys named Ilan in our group. What is the likliness of that.

Google Map!

Courtesy of David, who has his shit totally together and has been on top of figuring things out for our whole group, :)

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=106455245659695890492.000462e64f89baf1bb5d4&z=5&iwloc=000473468350bb6da9fbd

Getting Scuba Certified - open water dives

This didn't occur in Australia, but since I got scuba certified in preparation for the Great Barrier Reef, I figure it is appropriate to post this here. (Patricia, if you're reading this, you should stop because there's no way I'm not going to tell you all of this when you get back from Argentina)

Let me tell you some delightful stories of my getting scuba certified. They are long but they make me laugh. I just want to write this up before I forget forever.

This scuba class I took was me + 8 guys from a pool servicing company. Only 7 of them made it to the quarry. I more-or-less failed at every skill presented to me and I think Harrison certified me out of pity.

There were no expectations that I would be any good at scuba. During the in-pool sessions, Harrison (the instructor) had to have an extra dive master drive in (from Luray!) to work one-on-one with me (although Harrison kindly claimed that it was because he was worried that everyone else wouldn't get through their activities and he knew I was in a time crunch, he was totally lying).

So me + 7 pool service guys + Harrison (instructor) + Carlianne (TA/instructor) all met up at the quarry at 8am. It's in Fredericksburg, so I was up and going at 6am, which is not the most pleasant time to be awake, but it meant that there weren't that many people on the roads.

When you dive, even if you're in a big group, you always have a dive buddy who you should be able to reach out a hand and touch at all times. This isn't just a training thing--it also applies to real dives, until you are a dive master (and even then you're recommended to have a buddy). That way, if your regulator (and backup regulator) fails, you run out of air, or anything else bad happens, they can help you and let you breathe from their backup regulator. Since there were only eight of us (ten including the instructors) at the quarry, it was easy to divide us into four buddy pairs. Harrison immediately told Paul to be my buddy (I laughed. Paul, one of the pool service guys, was actually already scuba certified, but it was years and years ago, and he'd misplaced his card. Even though your certification lasts a lifetime, he figured he might as well get re-certified). Good start.

We're diving in a water-filled quarry. It's pretty big, but not huge--perhaps the size of a small lake? The water's warm until you drop down fifteen feet (5 m). Then it gets cold. Drop down another few meters and it gets freezing. The visibility is also really low, but, luckily for me, I either sink like a rock (dangerous) or pop back up to the surface (even more dangerous), so I had plenty of opportunity to see what was on the bottom (the goal is neutral buoyancy, but that just was not happening). Amongst a crapton of random things that were on the floor of the quarry were:
- a sunken boat (how you sink a boat in the equivalent of a small lake, I don't know. "You poke a hole in it!" - Mark)
- a sunken bicycle (in the middle of the quarry, not on one of the edges)
- a TOILET. Sitting there in the middle of the quarry.

Not to go off on a toilet tangent, but it's pretty good, so here we go. I might add that, besides the sunken toilet, we had no facilities at the quarry. Since I left my house before 6:30am and didn't leave the quarry until after 6:45pm, it is understandable that I needed to go pee while there. You know how annoying it is to pee when you're in a bathing suit? Well I was in a bathing suit, but, above my bathing suit, there was a diving vest. Above my diving vest, there was a wetsuit (and booties!). Since I needed to squat against a tree, I peeled off the wetsuit and diving vest and then changed shoes. I threw on a shirt so that when I pulled down my bathing suit, my boobs wouldn't be swaying in the breeze.

As the lack of facilities might suggest, we were in the middle of nowhere. We'd been at the quarry for six? hours now, and no one else had come by. Thus, I meander about 20 feet down a little path and lean against a tree right off the path, as a lady is wont to do when she needs to pee in the woods. I pulled down the bathing suit, leaving myself naked except for the t-shirt. Suddenly, out of the abyss, come fifteen college-aged male joggers. They run right past me. Naturally, they all give me perplexed expressions because I am (mostly) naked and peeing a mere three feet off the path they are running on. I was like "fuuuuuck you, universe!" (-Sokka). I can hardly just stop peeing, but I am finishing up when, right after the joggers, come--I kid you not--two bikers with video cameras strapped onto their helmets. They also look at me, slightly concerned. Following the bikers was a gaggle of female joggers and then one more male jogger. Where they all came from and why they came at that particularly opportune moment, I cannot tell you.

One of the other "skills" you have to be able to do (p.s. as I said before, I pretty much failed them all, but got given my certification anyway, likely out of pity) is to navigate in low visibility water, i.e.: only using a compass. This is practical because otherwise you will lose the shore/boat/etc. and you'd have to go up to the surface, which you want to avoid while diving. The diagram below helps illustrate my failure.

Let's just say that I cannot, in fact, navigate with a compass.

Diving compasses are special and need to be held perfectly level (which is harder then you might think, since underwater I'm not perfectly level). In addition to having water in them so that they're pressurized, they have two rotatable notch marks, between which you are supposed to keep north. There's also a line across the compass, called the "lubber line." You keep the lubber line lined up with your body. This way you know if you've swum in a straight line--if you have, north stays between your notches. Thus, if north is no longer between your notches, you are supposed to turn yourself so that it is back between them, allowing you to continue in your initial direction. Cleverly, when north strayed from between my notches (turns out I don't swim too straight), I kept rotating my notches, rather than my body. This made my compass and my lubber line totally useless. Finally Harrison swum out, pulled me to the surface and was like "Pasha, look where you are. Wtf, you can't change where north is on your compass." It was a beautiful moment, and even Harrison, always patient, looked as if he was going to give up.

Here is my favorite diving story. It's another one where it probably isn't that funny to read it, but it was so good at the time.

On our fourth and final dive, the only "skill" left was that we had to prove that we could successfully swim around underwater (which, in fact, I can't, but that's another story, and describing buoyancy is not interesting). Thus we lined up. Harrison was in the front, then the eight of us in our buddy pairs, and then Carlie at the back.

So I'm swimming around next to my buddy (read: I'm sinking and people are pulling me up, or I'm floating and people are pulling me down) and keeping a close eye on the buddy pair in front of me. The visibility is so low that if I get too far behind, I'll lose the chain. I'm watching the pair in front of me as I "swim," but every 30 seconds to a minute, I look over my shoulder to check on my buddy. We're swimming and swimming and swimming and then, oh oh oh, where has my buddy gone? Suddenly, he is vanished.

There's a standard procedure that not-advanced divers are supposed to use when they lose their buddy. You return to the place you last saw your buddy, rise ten feet in the water, looking for their bubbles. If you can't find your buddy after one minute (since you shouldn't be alone underwater in case something goes wrong), you need to ascend to the surface, note your position from two points on the shore, and wait there. Your buddy will do the same, so you can reunite at the surface.

However, there's very low visibility underwater. It's not as if I can find where I last saw my buddy--I could neither see the surface nor the bottom, so everything looks an identical sick dark green color. I also realized that if I tried to backtrack or search for my buddy, I'd lose Carlianne (who was right in front of me) and the diver I'd been following. My buddy, unlike the rest of the students, is already a certified diver, so, like a good buddy (haha), I figure he's probably fine. Thus, I continue after Carlianne and the others.

After seven or eight minutes (?), I still haven't found my buddy. I can't remember if I consciously went up to the surface, or whether I accidentally floated up, as I am wont to do. However, when I popped up to the surface, after not seeing my buddy for ~10 minutes, there were three other people at the surface, all going "buddy? buddy? buddy?" à la seagulls in Finding Nemo.

But here's the thing: none of those three people were my buddy.

This means that there were four people at the surface, looking for their buddies. But there are only eight of us. A.k.a. four buddy pairs. So I just lost it. I was laughing so hard because somehow everyone had lost their buddy. One guy's wife (?) was on the shore and she was dying too. For some reason this was the funniest thing ever to me.

After a few minutes, my buddy appears about 10+ feet away and a few second later, Carlianne emerged, looking SO disgusted. Since I was closest to her, she pointed at me and demanded to know if I knew where my buddy was. However, as my buddy had just showed up, I pointed to him and she was like "oh, well, at least ONE person didn't completely lose their buddy." Paul and I smiled innocently.

It was just a beautiful moment.

Buddy??? Buddy???? BUDDY?? BUUUUDDYYY

Paul gave me a pool service t-shirt, :)